Are You the Real Deal or Just Show?

We had been invited to lunch. This was a normal experience for us to be invited out for lunch in China. It was a really nice restaurant and the dishes were good without being memorable. Then a dish came out with some mystery looking meat and there were bits covering parts of it. As it got closer I could see that those bits were scorpions. There must have been like 20 or so scorpions on that dish. I had never seen real live (well dead) scorpions before, so I was wide-eyed. I was doing a quick count of the people around the table to see how many I would get. I guessed some might not want it, so I reckoned that I would get around two or three. I waited for others to dig in first, but no-one was moving. I wanted to make sure that I followed protocol, but I also didn’t want my scorpion and mystery meat to get cold. So, I asked an obliging Chinese friend if I could take one. “Of course”, was the answer. So, I grabbed my trusty chopsticks and scooped up a good sized specimen and plopped it onto my plate. I gave it the once over to see how it was going to eat this sucker. Still, no-one had ventured into eating them. I asked when they were going to eat. Most of the people around the table began to giggle and say that the scorpions were just for show and they weren’t going to eat them. Boy, was that a disappointment. Like the other dishes, the mystery meat was good without being memorable.

Some people are all show and no substance. They act like they have it all together, yet when push comes to shove they fall over (maybe I shouldn’t have pushed them). Some people have to get the latest MciPhones or eat out all the time or go travelling or get those new kicks (kicks is slang for shoes. I just thought I would show how cool I am). It’s a mask that people put on to show you something they think you want to see. They don’t want you to see underneath in case you don’t like it. But we all have flaws. No-one is perfect.

What about those people you see with those nice new cars. Impressive, right? Until you find out that they got it on finance and are going to end up paying 30% more for the car than it is worth. That’s dumb. Why do people do this? It’s for show. They aren’t making a rational purchasing decision. You might have heard the old thing about reliability about getting a new or newish vehicle. Well, the cost of maintenance can be a lot higher than older cars because you have to keep to the schedule and use all their expensive parts, otherwise, your warranty could be voided. The cars we drive aren’t the flashest things you’ve seen roll down the road, but they work for us. We travel around a bit, so we don’t want to spend too much on a wagon. The last one cost us around $2500. It is less than a friend’s annual insurance premium that they pay on their baby vehicle. We could buy a car like ours every year for what it costs in their insurance. Crazy! In the end we will give it away so that it can be useful to someone else.